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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 















NOTICE 


OF 


PETER HASENCLEVER, 


IRON MANUFACTURER OF 1764-69. 


HENRY 


As*® 

A. HOMES, 


LL.D. 


Read before the Albany Institute, April 7 , 1874 . 


ALBANY: 
JOEL M UN SELL. 
1 87 5 . 










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PETER HASENCLEVER 




The name of Peter Hasenclever is worthy of notice on 
account of his expensive enterprises in this state, previous 
to the revolution, in th'e manufacture of iron and to obtain 
products of the soil for exportation; and because it is his 
name which is perpetuated to this day in the Hasenclever 
mountains in Herkimer county, in the title of the Hasen¬ 
clever land patents, and in the Hasenclever iron mine in 
Rockland county. 

Peter Hasenclever, sometimes called Baron Hasenclever, 
was a German, born at Remscheid in the Rhenish pro¬ 
vinces, in 1716, who had been a partner in a mercantile 
house at Cadiz, in Spain. On account of the climate, which 
was unfavorable to his wife’s health, he went to London 
in the year 1763, where she had been living since the year 
1757. There he formed a partnership under the firm name 
of Hasenclever, Seton & Crofts, with a joint capital of 
,£21,000. He soon induced a respectable company of 
persons — Major General Greeme, Commodore Forest, 
George Jackson, secretary of admiralty, and others — to 
agree to spend from £10,000 to £40,000 in the production of 
pig iron, hemp, pot and pearl ashes in North America. 

The agreement was made in January, 1764, and by 
June of that year he himself reached New York, and by 
November there arrived at the same port, hundreds of 
Germans — miners, farmers and mechanics, with their 
families— whom his agents had engaged in Germany. As 
at this time his land and his mines had not been bought or 
selected, no candid judgment can hesitate to regard him as 



2 


Notice of Peter Hasenclever. 


manifesting at the very outset a rashness and want of 
calculation, through which the capital at his disposal might 
be imperiled and sunk, from many natural yet unexpected 
causes. 

Yet such was the energy of this sanguine man that he 
actually made iron at a decayed iron works by the month 
of November, 1764, and had purchased in New York and 
New Jersey 50,000 acres of land for his purposes, on the 
account of his company In August, 1765, he purchased 
a ship in New York, which he loaded for London, with 
iron, furs, timber, and potash to the amount of five hogs¬ 
heads. The iron and the potash had been manufactured 
by the company’s workmen. 

Within a year from November, 1764, he had transported 
535 persons, including their wives and children, from 
Germany, as miners, carpenters and laborers: and his 
partners in London also wrote to him that “it was univer¬ 
sally allowed by the trade that his iron was the best drawn 
which had ever made its appearance on the London mar¬ 
ket from America.” 

At the end of the next year, 1766, he had in operation 
four furnaces and seven forges in New Jersey and New 
York, and a pot and pearl ash manufactory on the Mo¬ 
hawk river, and had built stores, work-shops and dwelling 
houses to the number of, 235, besides dams for thirteen 
mill ponds and ten bridges, with many miles of roads. 

These furnaces were on the Pequonnock river at Char- 
lottenburg, and Pingwood and Long Pond in Bergen and 
Morris counties, New Jersey, and at Haverstraw, Orange 
county, New York, all of them being near the line of the 
Erie railroad as it is now laid out; and one was at 
Cortland, in Westchester county. Several of the mines 
which he then opened, and upon which he spent large sums 
of money in developing them, are still worked, and are 
greatly productive. He examined in all fifty-three mines, 
of which he asserted that only seven proved to yield good 
ore. 


Notice of Peter Ilasenclever . 


3 


The one at Cortland was on the east hank of the Hud¬ 
son, in the town of Cortland, near St. Anthony’s Hose. 
This furnace was early abandoned because the ore proved 
to contain too much sulphur, as did the ore of the sixth 
furnace in the highlands, forty miles above Hew York, near 
Haverstraw. The mine to this day is called Hasenclever’s 
mine, and is now worked by the Bayards of Philadelphia. 

Previous to Hasenclever’s operations, the only notices 
of iron manufacture in the state of which I have know¬ 
ledge were at Ancram, in Columbia county, and the Sterling 
works in Orange county. There were no rolling or slitting 
mills at that time, as they were forbidden by the British 
authorities to the colonists. Gov. Delancey, in 1757, states 
that from 1750 to 1757, the quantity of iron produced by 
Robert Livingston at Ancram was in all about 2,000 tons, 
and that it was the only place where iron was then smelted 
in the state. 

The Sterling mine, in Warwick, Orange county, was 
purchased by Lord Stirling in 1750; and in 1751, Messrs. 
Ward & Colton commenced making iron from the ore, 
and in 1752 the first forge was erected there; but work 
was soon temporarily abandoned. At a later date Peter 
Townsend, formerly a merchant of Hew York, worked 
the Sterling mine, and continued to do so for many years. 
He was the forger of the Hudson river chain at West 
Point. There is in the possession of Gen. Franklin Town¬ 
send a piece of iron casting, the back of a Franklin fire place, 
having the date of 1767 upon it, with the letters “A. T., 
Hew York ;” probably meant for A. Targee, of H. Y., an 
iron founder. 

Hasenclever’s pot and pearl ash manufactory was at Hew 
Petersburg, near the German Flats, on the Mohawk, 
where he had built two frame houses and thirty-four log 
houses, and had a fine settlement begun for the cultivation 
of hemp, flax and madder, in addition to his other enter¬ 
prises. 


4 


Notice of Peter Hasenclever. 


A gentleman spending money so liberally as Hasenclever 
most naturally had the acquaintance and aid of the leading 
gentlemen of the colony. Accordingly Gov. Moore, Gen. 
Gage and Sir Wm. Johnson gave him every facility in ob¬ 
taining land by purchase or by patent, and Sir William 
became equal partner with him in the potash manufacture. 
What he had actually done in importing emigrants was a 
sufficient warrant of what he would be able to do in the fu¬ 
ture, in bringing a much larger number and thus enhance 
the value of land to all holders of it. 

During this period of his buoyant hopes he developed 
great commercial schemes in his correspondence with Sir 
William, in which the usual sagacity of the latter forbade 
him to engage. One scheme was a proposal for the forma¬ 
tion of a trading company, that should have a monopoly 
of all the trade with the Indians, on the plausible plea of 
protecting them from all injustice in trade. Another was 
for exclusive privileges as distiller of spirits and in the 
manufacture of salt, by which it was alleged a large addi¬ 
tion would be made to the revenues of the colony. 

The enterprises in which he was actually engaged were 
such as, if sustained by these authorities, would commend 
them to the government at home for their zeal. The 
Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Manufactures 
and Commerce, at London, had, in the year 1764, as in 
other years, offered premiums for the production of these 
very articles in the North American colonies, which Has¬ 
enclever had undertaken to produce — iron, madder, hemp, 
pot and pearl ashes. 

In the short space of two years Hasenclever spent, ac¬ 
cording to his own admission, £54,600 on account of the 
company, being £14,000 more than the company was ever 
pledged to be responsible for. The credit side of his ac¬ 
count showed little in his favor. Though the iron was 
good, there had been very little sent over to the London 
market. Freshets had carried away his dams, one of 


Notice of Peter Hasenclever. 


5 


which was 860 feet long and twelve feet high; roads and 
bridges had to be built; an incompetent manager who had 
been sent over to supplant him had made useless and very 
expensive changes while Hasenclever was on a visit to Eng¬ 
land ; and the ore of some of his mines on which he had 
expended much labor contained too much sulphur to be 
profitably melted. Besides, he had justly quarreled with 
and separated from Rupert, his potash manufacturer; and 
his potash did not turn out to be of prime quality, and 
sold at a loss in London. Thirty pounds of hemp seed 
which he had imported from Europe and sowed, yielded 
no returns. 

While he was struggling with ardor and hope against a 
thousand obstacles to immediate success, he learned in 
October, 1766, that Seton, one of his partners, was a bank¬ 
rupt and had wasted the capital of the company, and that 
his commercial house had been fraudulently sacrificed. 
He succeeded, however, in making an arrangement with 
his co-adventurers for the continued prosecution of mining 
in America, and came again in 1768 to Hew York as their 
agent. But the new manager of the works whom they 
had sent out was utterly ignorant of the business. His 
difficulties here and in London increased, his bills were 
protested, and he proceeded in 1769 to London for the last 
time. He represents in his statement of his case that the 
American Company, sometimes called also the London 
Company, was engaged in an unworthy clandestine con¬ 
spiracy against him, and that it was by their machinations 
in 1770 that he was declared a bankrupt. Indeed, Lord 
Hillsborough, secretary for the colonies, at its solicita¬ 
tion, wrote to Gen. Clinton to sustain the new manager of 
the company against the interference of Hasenclever. 

In part that he might be able to justify his proceedings 
before the Court of Chancery, Gov. Franklin of Hew Jer¬ 
sey, by official request appointed a committee consisting of 
Lord Stirling, Col. John Schuyler, and others to visit all 


6 


Notice of Peter Hasenclever. 


Lis works. They testified to the perfection of his iron 
works, to the superior quality of his iron, and to the many 
improvements in the methods of manufacture which he had 
introduced, some of which were afterwards adopted in 
England. And one particular which they mention, to 
quote their own words, is the following, which is strange 
if true : “ He is the first person that we know who has so 
greatly improved the use of the great natural ponds of 
this country, as by damming them to secure reservoirs of 
water for the use of iron works in the dry season, without 
which the best streams are liable to fail in the great 
droughts we are subject to.” 

At this time James Rivington, the Hew York bookseller 
and publisher, writes to Sir William Johnson (Sept. 16, 
1769): “ Poor Peter Hasenclever, w r ho in the last five years 
has buried the better part of a hundred thousand pounds 
in this country, is now among the unfortunates, being de¬ 
clared a bankrupt. His fate is regretted, for he was hon¬ 
est and well beloved.” Thomas, in his History of Print¬ 
ing in America , relates that pamphlets opposed to the 
stamp act were frequently published in 1765 in Hew Jer¬ 
sey with the imprint “ Printed at Peter Hasenclever’s iron 
works;” “a wealthy German well known as the owner of 
extensive iron works in Hew Jersey.” It was a ruse of 
the authors to conceal the knowledge of the place where 
the printing had been done. 

As late as 1773 he memorialized the lord chancellor 
for relief by the court, stating that he was so poor that his 
wife and daughter were then being supported by the cha¬ 
rity of his relatives in Germany. 

The landed property of which he was possessed in his 
own name, or in behalf of the American company, was the 
50,000 acres connected with his mines in Hew Jersey and 
in Orange county, Hew York, 18,000 acres in Herkimer 
county, called the Hasenclever patent, 6,755 acres bought 
additionally for his agricultural operations close by Ger- 


Notice of Peter Hasenclever. 


7 


man Flats, 40,000 acres in Nova Scotia, and 11,500 acres on 
Lake Champlain north of Crown Point. The land on 
Lake Champlain he bought jointly with Gen. Gage, Gen. 
Philip Schuyler and others. His title to this land in Es¬ 
sex county was probably never perfected. 1 As late as 1815, 
1,000 acres of this land in Orange county was sold for non¬ 
payment of taxes to the amount of $415, which had been 
due since 1767. 

A portion of the land in the Hasenclever patent in Her¬ 
kimer, which was dated February 27, 1769, was sold by 
the state for the non-payment of taxes as late as 1822. 
The land was in the towns called Herkimer and Newport, 
afterwards Schuyler, and was bounded northeast by Cana¬ 
da creek, south by Cosby manor and Colden’s manor, and 
bordered on the Mohawk river. This land which it was 
kindly allowed to him to purchase, originally was part of 
a large purchase of 140,000 acres made from the Indians, 
by Gov. Moore and Sir William Johnson. He was a 
frequent visitor at Johnson Hall, and there are numerous 
letters from him among the Johnson papers in the N. Y. 
State Library. Gen. Gage, in a letter, speaks of him very 
favorably to Johnson. In his letters to Johnson, Hasen¬ 
clever expressed in the strongest language his convictions 
that it was not for the interest of Americans to engage in 
manufactures, but only in raising raw material. 

During the year 1770 he was endeavoring with much 
hope and expectation to find purchasers in England for 
his land that he might get free from his troubles. What 
became of his lawsuit after 1773, I have no information, 
other than that proceedings were had in the case in the 
Court of Chancery as late as twelve years after, in 1785. 
He returned to Germany, and introduced at Landshut, in 
Silesia, the linen manufacture, which he conducted with 
great judgment, till the year 1792, when he died much 
lamented. In at least one place in this country where his 

1 Watson’s History of Essex County, N. Y. } Albany, 1869. 



8 


Notice of Peter Hasenclever . 


name was in use one hundred years since, it has been cor¬ 
rupted into Baron Hass. 

Steel of the finest quality imported into this country from 
Germany, till a comparatively recent period, was known 
as the Hasenclever steel. We hope to ascertain whether 
it was a steel manufactured by our Hasenclever’s methods. 

It may stimulate a worthy spirit of enterprise that I 
should copy in conclusion an extract from Hasenclever’s 
Case on a silver mine in this state: “I lost also on a 
share in a silver mine of which Col. Fred. Philips (on 
whose land it lies, twenty-eight miles above Hew York) 
had given me one-sixth, and I went there with some miners 
to examine it; this mine proves now to be very valuable, 
and may become in time an immense concern.” 1 

Much of the information in this article has been derived 
from a pamphlet of which I have never heard of any copy 
than the one copy, which is in the State Library. It contains 
97 pages, and is entitled The Case of Peter Hasenclever , 
and was written by himself. It contains many additional 
statistics as to the cost of production of the articles men¬ 
tioned in this paper, and the obstacles to success, especially 
as regards iron : with numerous details regarding his finan¬ 
cial difficulties. 

It has seemed most proper to make a record of an at¬ 
tempt to develop the iron mining industry in this country 
at such an early date, and at such prodigal expenditure, 
which whatever may have been the loss to its originators, has 
of course inured to the advantage of others. The town 
and county histories of the places where he lavished his 
capital, contain no account of the visionary but most sin¬ 
cere Peter Hasenclever. 


1 An early member of tbe Institute, Winslow C. Watson, Esq., has kindly 
suggested to me that this mine is the one which was rediscovered about 
forty years since at Sing Sing, and as he is disposed to believe near the site 
of the State Prison. The implements which had been used in ante-revolu¬ 
tionary times were found in the abandoned mine. 


























































































































































